


We'll Rant and We'll Roar

by ninhursag



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, Inquisition, M/M, Mayhem, Pirates, Romance, Torture, woobie boy being toppy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-13
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-16 22:49:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cracky crack, but written in a somewhat serious manner. The one where it is the 17th century and Mark and his company of pirate/mercenaries are about to raid the coast of Brazil just in time to rescue a victim of the Inquisition.</p><p>Historical accuracy is about on a Pirates of the Caribbean/romance novel level.</p><p>Warnings include: Torture (ie the Portuguese Inquisition), very casual physical violence (pirates and early capitalists!), unrealized threats of sexual violence</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Yeah, so this is all really obviously not even true, right?

Mark does the scouting. Not because he has the talent to spy where people are involved—he doesn't, he doesn't blend, at least, and he has no talent for talking, not to flesh and blood human creatures. But he has the clearest eyes for ground, for measuring weaknesses and defenses and finding the holes where the right pressure can make an enemy crumble for just long enough for them to take what they need. He has the best sight and he needs to see for himself.

To account for his personal weaknesses, he comes to São Paulo with a native guide, a man who believes he's instructing a rich Dutch merchant who is here to see the town ahead of his trading mission. This is not completely false, therefore it passes muster.

The town is small and worn and dusty, tired looking natives, busy looking Portuguese and bored looking soldiers, though few enough of those. Mark is watching and noting and planning, thinking that he is almost done with what he needs here, and then he's interrupted.

He's interrupted, because there's someone shouting in the streets, raucous and angry. A moment later more voices take up the cry until it becomes almost a chant, and Mark turns to his guide with a raised eyebrow. “Are we going to see a riot?” he asks. At least that will give him the chance to gauge the town's civil guards in action.

The man shrugs, “Doubtful, but it could happen. It's _verguenza_.”

Mark pauses, going over his store of Portuguese. The word isn't hard, but the concept... “Shame?”

It's what the word means, but it doesn't tell him anything. His guide says, “A ritual of the auto-da-fe. Some poor bastard is being welcomed back into the bosom of the True Church after a stint with the Hounds of God-- you know, the Inquisition. All he needs to do is give them all his worldly goods and submit to this.”

Mark opens his mouth to ask another question, but the shouting gets closer and a procession clambers into the square. A crowd of angry looking people, mostly in rags following behind a shirtless boy in shackles. Even from a distance, Mark can see that he's a mess of whip marks and bleeding stripes on his shoulders and chest.

Someone throws something that splatters, the sickening splash of rotten food. The boy stumbles but doesn't fall. His face twists. He has dark eyes, Mark can see them flash from across the square. He moves badly, like someone in pain, but he moves. There are men in livery trailing him, not as tall as he is, but bulkier, probably ready to haul him along if he falters but they don't move to stop the shouting crowd from throwing things.

“Who is he?” Marks asks. “What did he do?”

“He'll have been accused of heresy. Probably judaizing in the attic while professing belief in the Church in the public square.” The guide shakes his head. “Really-- who knows? All it means for sure is he's from a converso family and someone hates him or wants what he has.”

“You don't sound like you approve,” Mark says, while his mouth twists to one side. The boy stumbles again, catching himself against a wall before one of the guards shoves him forward. There's a smear of dull red left on the whitewash where his palm brushed over it.

Mark's guide crosses himself and shrugs. “I believe in the Church, I don't sympathize with Jews. But they used to leave this kind of shit across the sea in Portugal. They didn't need to bring it here.” He gives Mark a sideways glance. “You're telling me you Protestants are any different?”

Mark shakes his head.

Across the square they're still pushing the boy along. There's another splatter and some of the rotten fruit hits one of the guards this time, and that's enough to make him shout and wave a menacing saber in the direction of the crowd. They back off a few paces. In the middle of the square, in front of the Church, is a monk in Dominican robes. The Dominicans are the Hounds of God... the Inquisition. This one has reddish hair below his tonsure and there's something smug and gloating in his smile.

The guide laughs and spits on the ground. “Yeah,” he says. “You Protestants are no different, just more boring.”

“I don't know if they are. I'm not a Protestant,” Mark says, but he's not giving much attention to the conversation anymore, he's watching the sick tableaux in front of him instead. He can see the boy's face more clearly now. He has smooth, even features under the filth and bruises. His mouth is set in a grimace, but he's still walking under his own power.

It's when they want him to kneel that they have to push him down. He goes heavily, almost falling in front of the Dominican monk.

“Eduardo Saverin, you have been accused of heresy and rebellion against the will of God. Confess, child, and be reborn in the True Church,” the man says and he puts his hands on the boy's face, pulling him in to kiss his temple. He's still smiling, like he's won something, like this is his personal victory. Mark flinches on the boy's behalf, even before the man leans down, as if to whisper something to him.

Mark looks away, he doesn't want to watch that part, so he doesn't see what happens next, he just hears that voice, hoarse and raw and rage filled. Proud. That boy's voice-- Eduardo Saverin. “I don't confess, I won't. I recant. I fucking recant, so you had better burn me, because you'll never touch me. Do you hear me, you will never touch--”

Mark is on his feet, staring, as the square erupts into pandemonium. There's screaming insults that go too fast for his Portuguese, all he hears is the rage and hate in them as the crowd lunges for Eduardo. Mark's hands is on his pistol before he even realizes he's gripping the handle and he's stepping forward without really knowing why.

It's only his guide's grasp on his elbow that stops him. Mark turns to glare at the man, like he's forgotten he's there. “What will they do now?” he hears himself ask. But what he thinks is, he knows exactly what he's doing next.

The guide shrugs and looks up to the heavens. “They'll lay out the pyre, more than likely. They'll want to keep him in the dungeons until it's ready, of course, because with a display like that the people are as likely to tear him limb from limb as wait for the auto-da-fe to finish it.”

Mark breathes in and for the first time he can remember, he wants. He wants like he's wanted nothing but his ships and his plans and his company. He doesn't know why, not really, but he never questions it.

There's a pause, a long one, while he fingers his pistol and thinks and doesn't notice at first that his guide looks at him strangely, side-eyed. “Why does this bother you so much, what is he to you? He's just a Jew.”

“We just Jews need to stick together,” Mark mutters and then instantly regrets that. He shouldn't have said it, now this will get messy. He probably shouldn't even have bothered with a guide to begin with, the damned human element always gets in the way.

“I thought you were Dutch,” the guide says, taking a slow, sidling step back.

Mark shrugs. “I am Dutch,” he explains. The man keeps sidling and Mark thinks, with a flash of insight he gets sometimes, this person suspects, this person is going to sell us out. This person is going to try to stop him.

The pistol will be too loud, too unreliable even at this short distance. He can't draw attention to himself, not now. So draws back a step, like he's going to run. Instead he draws a spare dagger out of his boot and slits the man's throat. It is regrettably messy, but at least it's quiet, just a wheezing gurgle and the end.

“It's nothing personal,” Mark tells the body. “But you could have really compromised everything.”

At least he has what he needs. Mark wipes the dagger on the man's shirt and walks out of town as if nothing was wrong. Dustin and the men meet him in the foothills. Dustin rolls his eyes when he sees Mark in a blood stained shirt and no guide left alive to pay off.

“Hey, Mark. Did you have to kill him?” Dustin asks. “Our investors will start to complain if we get a name for being bloodthirsty to our own hirelings.”

Mark shrugs. “The whole point was that no one knew the company hired him. Anyway, he found out too much about me, it would have compromised the exercise and then our investors would have had something real to complain about.”

“No, you're right, oh Captain, my Captain, as long as we make good on their capital it's all fine, what's a little blood and guts?” Dustin says, but he rolls his eyes skyward one more time, as if asking for mercy.

Mark sighs and scratches his shirt. Blood flakes off of it. “That's what we do, that's our differentiation point from any asshole with a letter of marque and reprisal like Sinan or Barbarossa, because unlike them, we're reliable. We don't fail. You put money into our company and we make good on it, whether it's going to be straight transatlantic trading or--”

“Or pillaging the Iberian mother-fuckers, yes, I realize this. So, let's talk pillaging,” Dustin says. “Did you learn anything useful before you killed the guide I hired for you?”

Mark frowns and then nods. “Yes. I really did.”

They formed the company in Leiden while they were still at University. It was him and Dustin and Chris at the beginning, in their shabby attic rooms, sketching maps in the window dust with the dull side of a dagger. Mark came up with the plan while he was doing pick up work as a computer for a shipping firm, totaling up figures and calculations, translating coded messages from countries so far it would take months or years to touch ground in them. It was tedious and precise and it told him something he'd only known vaguely before-- there was money to be made-- real money, and it was not here in Holland clerking or computing or schlepping a peddler's cart. And it definitely was not in conventional trade, not if you were a Jew with no family or contacts. But, it was out there, there was a world out there, and it was ripe and they were ready. Chris was the only one of the three of them that actually stayed in Leiden long enough to take a degree.

Now they were here with a fast ship, a full company of personally loyal sailors and soldiers, and the financial backing of half the investors in the Amsterdam Exchange.

“Do we have the plan of attack in order?” Dustin asks. Normally he wouldn't have to ask, Mark would already be telling him. Would be less distracted.

Mark shrugs, because he can be normal. “It's simple enough. The guards are mercenaries not local people and there aren't very many of them, not enough to really man the town walls. Morale is low, the townsfolk are going to abandon their betters if they have their own interests at stake, not protect them. Here--” he sketches out the angles of approach, where their men will go, where the guns should point and how high up to place the single artillery piece they'd dragged in from the sea, just in case they need covering fire.

When he stops, Dustin is still looking at him. They've known each other a long time, since their University days, and Mark can tell when something is off in his friend. He raises an eyebrow to let Dustin know he knows and that's all he needs to start talking. “You know I trust in your plans, Mark, but, really, what do you think you're going to find inside the prison that makes it worth your personal attention when it's just about the only defensible position they'll have? Are they locking up their gold along with the thieves these days?”

Mark shrugs. “There's someone there. I-- I saw someone. They have someone in there I want to get out.” He can't explain himself, not really. Just that seeing that boy—Eduardo—made him want to see what he would look like cleaned up, standing on the deck of Mark's ship and smiling. He would certainly have to be smiling.

“You're wearing that look, you only get that look for ships, maps and artillery pieces. What-- wait.” Dustin frowns at him and then both his eyebrows go up suddenly. “Someone? Would this someone be a pretty maid, unjustly imprisoned?”

Mark blinks. “No.” Eduardo is certainly no maid.

“You're lying,” Dustin proclaims. “You're going in to ransack a fucking dungeon because you saw someone _beautiful_ and you _want_ them. You want to be a hero. A chivalric knight! To earn the lady's gratitude and more besides-- admit it!”

“Admit what?”

Dustin smirks and leans in close. His breath smells like a beer ration. “Admit that you're sending our men to pillage while you rescue some gorgeous thing that has actually roused your icy cold blood?”

Mark frowns and presses his lips together. He hadn't really thought about it that way, but it did make a certain degree of sense. And Eduardo had been very attractive. “Yes, I suppose that's true,” he says and then leans back to his make-shift map, showing troop distributions. “I'll want you on the granary hill, that's where they keep their storehouses and--” Dustin's coughing so Mark stops and looks up at him. He's turning a strange color and there's a strangled expression on his face. Mark would wonder if he was choking but they hadn't eaten anything. Still, if anyone could choke on their own tongue, it would be Dustin.

Mark goes to assist him, but before he gets a chance, Dustin stops coughing and glares at him like he'd just set his library on fire. “Is this actually true? I didn't think-- that is, all these years, I've thought... I've thought you might be a _eunuch_.”

“You asked,” Mark explains. Dustin seems to be breathing properly again so he looks away from him. “I answered with the truth. Now, about your position-- this is the hill that will command the fortifications.”

The plan is simple because simple and straightforward works best. They go in under the cover of darkness in two groups, one to the storehouse to set it on fire-- the whole town will spill out to try to save their grain supply and the other to the treasury.

Mark has his own agenda. The prison will be empty of guards needed elsewhere pretty fast and he's one man alone. He'll slip in during the confusion-- after all, no one expects you to break into a prison-- and slip out with what he wants. “And I'll find you if you don't,” Dustin had told him, bumping a shoulder against his. “Don't get killed before I get a chance, your fair maiden is only worth it if you live long enough to enjoy her.”

Dustin is kind of an idiot sometimes, but Mark had nodded and bumped his shoulder back.

It goes like clockwork, like carving into something ripe and easy. Mark stays long enough to make sure it will go right before he implements his own plan.

The town prison is not large, but normally it would be very sturdy. Not so now, with the guards run out to help battle the fire at the storehouse. There's one left, but he's yawning and rubbing his eyes and Mark makes short work of him.

The cells seem to contain the usual rabble of thieves and starving people. The only thing that makes them different from the same scene in Europe is the cadence of their language and the color of their skin. Eduardo is not in the common cells, but that would have been too easy. Mark walks past them, even when they scream and bang the walls, crying to be let out-- he doesn't want to draw the town's attention back to here, not yet. Soon, though.

“Later,” he mouths, but they don't seem to hear him.

The Inquisition keeps it's prisoners apart from the ordinary ones, on a lower level, in dank, windowless rooms. Mark lights a torch on his way down, held tight in one hand, knife in the other. He puts it out when he hears voices, sees light from a room down the hall.

The door is open and Mark walks toward it, slow and careful, but no guards appear and no one calls out from any of the dark cells. When he gets closer the room stinks of cooked flesh and filth, even worse than the cells up above.

In the room Mark sees the monk in the Dominican robes, the one from the town square, standing next to a stone slab that holds a huddled up Eduardo. Mark hangs back in the darkness for a moment, just watching, maybe waiting to see if he'll feel the same... the whatever he had felt outside in the square or if that was just a fluke.

The monk is talking, smug and low and pleased with himself. “If you make a full confession, you can still walk away with your life,” he says. “Well... not walk, I suppose, not after our recent exercises.” He laughs. “But you'll live instead of burning and that's worth something. All you need to do is confess and name your accomplices in heresy. Your father and mother, I can only assume?”

There's a cough. Eduardo's voice is weaker than it was in the square, rougher, but yes, it... yes... Mark still feels... “I'm not denouncing anyone. They never-- I never-- fuck you. Fuck--” there's a sharp sound, the slap of something against flesh and Eduardo gasps out hoarsely.

The monk sounds like it's funny, like it's great. “Well, that's an alternative too, though it would be more like fuck _you_ , Amo Eduardo. If you'd agreed to that a month ago, we would never have gotten to this unpleasant point. Unfortunately, now that you've complicated everything by being so difficult, I can't exactly let you live unless you give up some names.” There's a pause and his voice gets quieter, cajoling, like a man trying for seduction. “I can promise they'll garrote you before they put you on the pyre. It's a much kinder death.”

Mark takes a few steps forward, though he doesn't really remember doing it. He just knows he's in the room, he's in the room stepping up behind the monk while the man is still talking and he feels-- he feels, he-- and from the stone slab, Eduardo's dark eyes go wide and his lips part in surprise.

Mark smiles at him and puts his knife through the monk's kidney. It is a perfectly aimed blow, really good. The man collapses almost immediately like a sack of meat and Mark pulls out the blade and steps up to the stone slab.

“Hello,” he says. “Er.” He doesn't reach out a hand because he's got a bloody knife in it, but he's not sure Eduardo would know what to do with it if he did. Up close his face is bruised, skin dull in the firelight, but the features under the grime and mess are exactly what Mark remembers seeing outside.

Eduardo blinks at him. “Y--you killed him,” Eduardo says. He sounds precarious, confused. He's blinking in the dull light. “I think. Are you sure he's dead?”

Mark frowns at the corpse at his feet. He kicks it, and yes, it is definitely just meat now. “Yes.” He frowns, trying to think about what Eduardo might want, what he'd want if he were the one on that slab. “I could saw off his ears as a token if you need to be really sure, but I only have the one knife right now and we might need the edge undulled before we get where we're going.”

“Oh. No, that's not necessary, maybe later.” There's a pause. “I wanted to kill him, but this will do, I think. What now?”

“Now, I want you to come with me,” he tells Eduardo. “And get out of this place. I have a ship waiting right off the coast so you won't have to worry about being chased. You'll be safe.”

Eduardo gives him a long stare that would probably be searching if his eyes weren't glazed over and he weren't shaking with something that was probably more pain than relief. “Hmm,” Eduardo says and then coughs heavily. His voice is a hoarse thread when he stops coughing, definitely so much worse than it had been that morning in the square. “That seems like a good idea. Only, I can't feel my feet. That's good because they don't really hurt anymore, but I also don't think I could walk on them.”

Mark frowns and looks at his feet, remembering what the monk had said about walking out of here and how Eduardo wouldn't be doing that. They're visibly bruised and bleeding, with nasty white blisters across the heels that explain the stink of seared meat that permeates the room. He can't tell if the blood is because someone pulled the toenails out or took a whip to the soles. “I could carry you?” he offers. Eduardo is very tall, but he doesn't look heavy. Torture probably diminishes mass. Anyway, that will have to be it, Mark is not leaving him here.

“Oh. That would be good.” Eduardo frowns and gives him another long, hazy look, punctuated by more blinks like keeping his eyes open is hard. “By the way, I don't mean to be rude, but who are you?”

“Mark Zuckerberg,” Mark says, while he edges around Eduardo, trying to determine how he can lift him and wield a pistol at the same time. “I'm the Captain,” he adds, in case Eduardo was curious. “Of my ship and company. So, if you come with me, I'll definitely be able to--”

He stops talking when he realizes that the way Eduardo's eyes roll back in his head isn't boredom or annoyance, it's just a surrender into unconsciousness. “I'll tell you more later,” he explains, just in case, and then goes back to contemplating how in hell he's supposed to pick Eduardo up. He touches carefully, delicately. Eduardo's skin is burning, fever hot, and he moans under Mark's hands. Mark tries to tell himself that in this case, that response is not a good thing.

“Are you dead, Mark? I told you not to get killed!” A familiar voice calls from the corridor and then Dustin comes barreling in. He's a gunpowder stained mess, but he looks unwounded. Good, another pair of hands, timely. But then Dustin comes to an abrupt and unhelpful stop in the doorway, staring while Mark tries to maneuver Eduardo into a hold where he can be carried. “Is that-- that's not a maiden,” he says shortly.

Mark makes a face at him. “I never said he was,” he points out. “He can't walk and he's not really conscious, can you help me with him?”

“But that's not a--” Dustin starts. Then he stops again. He's staring at Eduardo's mangled feet. “Holy Lord God,” he hisses, drawing out a hand as if to touch and then drawing it back. “Who did that to him?”

“That Inquisitor over there, I think,” Mark points out the dead body slumped in the corner. “Eduardo refused to confess to being a heretical judaizer and so they did that to him before they got around to burning him which they were going to do today.”

Dustin looks from the body to Eduardo's feet and back to his face, dirty and lax, but still amazingly nice to look at. He bites his lip like he's trying to think of something to say. What finally comes out is, “I really did think you were a eunuch, you know? I'm still relieved to know you're intact, at least!” Then he laughs, like he thinks he's supposed to.

Mark ignores him. Jostling Eduardo seems to bring him around, at least enough to whimper. One of his shoulders moves too easily, like it's dislocated and that draws another low, shuddery whimper. A moment later, Eduardo's eyes slit open again. “You're the Captain, you said?” he mumbles. “And you'll help me? I remember you said... you ran him through...”

“Yes,” Mark says firmly, before Dustin has a chance to comment. Eduardo nods and then his head lolls over, resting on Mark's shoulder. It's heavy, but not a bad weight, not really.

“Oh. Well, listen,” Eduardo whispers, low, like he's giving something away. “I know I said they could burn me, but I don't want to die like that. Burning hurts... it looks like it hurts... they _scream_ when they burn and they _smell_ , he burned my feet, I don't want...”

There's a sharp intake of breath from Dustin but Mark ignores him. Instead he tries to look at Eduardo and lift him up without hurting him more at the same time. “You won't. I won't let them.”

There's a nod, the pressure of Eduardo's cheek rubbing against his shirt. “I know what to do. You have to run me through, like him. Or cut my throat. That doesn't look like it hurts as much and fast is better than slow.”

Mark almost drops him. “Nobody's burning you or running you through, so forget about it,” he says, a little too loudly. “We're getting you out of here, remember?” But Eduardo's eyes close and his neck goes lax again, like he just slid right back out of consciousness. Mark sighs and puts his hand in Eduardo's hair. It feels stiff and greasy, smells of old sweat and stale pain.

In that dark, echoing little room, Dustin's voice suddenly sounds strange, pent up and too low and furious. Mark can't remember hearing that in him before, not ever, but maybe the emotion's always been there waiting for the right moment. “Damned right, no one is burning. The fucking Inquisition can just,” he says, softly, shaking his head. “Well, fuck it, if he's fair maiden enough for you, I can work with that. Let me help you with him.”

They stumble under Eduardo's weight, one of his arms flung precariously over each of their shoulders but between the two of them they get him out and into the open air.

“I'm going to lose nine galleons to Chris, just so that you know,” Dustin grumbles as they go. “He took the bet that you weren't actually castrated, just really oblivious.”

 

TBC


	2. Part the Second

On the way out, Mark opens the main cell doors and lets the prisoners stampede. The better to confuse the issue of what really happened here, he figures. Dustin just shrugs and says, “Another blow for liberty and the rights of man,” in a disgustingly cheerful voice. Eduardo stays lax, unconscious and really heavy.

They put him in the cart with the liberated gold and he whimpers, but doesn't open his eyes, just shakes sometimes.

Chris is waiting for them back at the ship, “You're late,” he tells them. He looks tired and irritated, which is not unusual, but he's sort of smiling when he sees the carts they've brought. “Tide's about to turn—if you were any later we'd be sitting targets for the whole countryside.”

Mark shrugs. They weren't any later, so why worry about could-have-beens now? “Then we should pull anchor and go,” is all he says. “Oh, and dig up the barber, we have someone who needs medical treatment.”

That stops Chris and he frowns, looking Mark over and then peers over his shoulder, probably looking for Dustin. “Are you--” he starts.

“No, not me. None of our people, well-- there's John Jerguson, but he pretty much got gutted by a very angry blacksmith, we had to give him the coupe. He's past bleeding, and the rest of us are no more than cuts or bruises,” Mark waves his hands, as if to make his own words come faster.

He doesn't have to explain because Dustin and one of the men are bringing a not very conscious Eduardo up the gangway like so much extra stolen treasure. “Bring him to my quarters,” Mark says, without even thinking about it. It makes sense, he has a good bed even though he keeps forgetting to sleep in it-- easier to fall asleep in the crow's nest or on the deck, where he can see and know what's going on at all times. It's a good space.

Chris looks at him funny, looks at Eduardo and says... nothing. A simple, “Captain,” and a nod, and then he hops over the rail and onto the gangway to hurry down and supervise the loading of their new cargo.

There'd been an actual university trained physician onboard ship at one point, but Mark can't remember what happened to him-- not since the last time the irritating motherfucker had tried to bleed him when he was already bleeding sufficiently on his own, thank you very much. They'd decided the barber had to be the ship's physician mostly because no one else would do it. Anyway, he had sharp razors for bleeding, a jar of leeches, and other qualifications besides.

“He's read Galen. He's the closest thing to a doctor we have since Mark made the last one wet his breeches and jump overboard!” Was all Dustin had to say on the subject.

Chris, distinctly unimpressed had muttered. “So? Galen's a dead Greek idiot. Vesalius wrote that Galen got his anatomy from dissecting apes, not people because he was an ap--”

Dustin makes a face. “Oh, you've read Galen too! And Vesalius! Excellent, you can be our ship physician!”

“No.” Mark and Chris said at once and so the barber it had been.

Mark is not sure he wants the barber bothering Eduardo, but he doesn't have any better ideas. Anyway, he's fairly sure the man hasn't killed anyone who wasn't going to die anyway.

“The shoulder's out of joint but it's a simple enough fix and the lash marks are shallow. It's the feet that are the real pisser. Maggots for the flesh and wormwood for the fever,” the man says and blinks owlishly at Mark after inspecting Eduardo's mangled feet. “They eat dead flesh, keep it from going gangrenous. Maggots or he might lose them.”

Mark shakes his head. Eduardo is breathing evenly, like an unconscious person, which is probably for the best. “Lose what?” he asks, just to clarify.

“His feet,” the barber says and then spits on the floor. “Might lose them anyway. Probably safest if I just took them.”

“Huh,” Mark mutters.

Eduardo is apparently not unconscious because that makes his eyes pop open, dark and furious under the fever glaze. He tries to do something like sit up but it's not really successful. “No,” he spits, hoarse and wild-eyed. He's even speaking good Dutch, just the faintest hint of Lisbon in his accent, which is pretty good for a delirious man.“You can kill me but don't even... don't you...”

Mark finds himself kneeling on the edge of the bed, hand on Eduardo's shoulder. “No,” he agrees. “No, of course not.”

“Would be safest,” the barber says, but he shrugs phlegmatically at two pairs of eyes, dark and wild and blue and cold. “If he gets the gangrene and dies, don't say I didn't say.”

“Right. Any other ideas?” Mark says, palm still pressed flat against the sharp bone of Eduardo's collar.

Another shrug. “My gran always swore by a wash of salt water and a rub of honey.”

Mark frowns and looks back down at Eduardo, but Eduardo's eyes are closed against, eyelids dark with exhaustion, like the outburst took all the energy he had. “Fine,” Mark answers for him. “Let's try that.”

The barber goes off to get whatever he needs and Mark stays put, still on the bed, fingers still splayed over Eduardo's shoulder. Eduardo's eyes drift open again and he's frowning, just a little.

“You,” he says, not angry just confused, and then stops.

“Yes?” Mark asks.

“I think I should know this, but, who are you again?” Eduardo mouth shifts when Mark smiles down at him. “Where am I?”

“I've got you. I'm Mark Zuckerberg. You're on my ship, and we cast off the coast of Brazil hours ago on the tide. No one will catch us. You're safe.”

Eduardo blinks, dark eyes softening. He stops trying to sit up, anyway. “Oh. Well... thank you...”

“It wasn't a problem. Why don't you rest now?” And Eduardo nods and closes his eyes.

“You helped me,” Eduardo murmurs, eyelids bruised and purple, still fluttering. “I didn't think anyone would.”

“Rest,” Mark repeats with a gentleness he didn't know he had in him. He catches one of Eduardo's hands in his without really thinking about it and rubs his thumb against the prominent bone of the wrist.

Eduardo's eyes slit open, just for a second, focused on Mark's hand on him. Then he sleeps.

It's a better part of two weeks before the next time Eduardo wakes up enough to make actual sense instead of screaming Portuguese curses and trying to punch anyone in reach until he's soothed down. Soothed, he will apologize, softly, sincerely, as if his life depends on it, but the next time he's roused the rage is back as if it had never gone. Fever, the barber says, playing havoc with his senses.

Mark purses his lips and nods, pretends that he cannot understand the desperate words that come out of Eduardo's mouth and that it doesn't make him wish he'd had a longer time to kill the Inquisitor in that fetid little room.

Instead he sits down by Eduardo's bedside, just out of punching range, and talks to him. He talks about Amsterdam, the canals and shops and the ships and how the world had felt so ripely possible and open. Eduardo probably doesn't hear a word of it, but he doesn't whimper or shout in his delirium anymore and at some point he reaches out, too warm hand sliding across the blankets until Mark moves closer and then he reaches out to grip his hand tightly. As if he has been listening after all.

The fever breaks in the beginning of the second week and Eduardo sleeps without coming up for more than a few sips of water or to piss for three days afterward.

On the third day, Mark is holding onto Eduardo's hand, loosely, so as not to jar any bandages. Eduardo's breathing is slow and even, he doesn't wake up. “It's going to be a new world,” Mark is saying. “We'll build it without all the old bulwarks, without walls and Inquisitions and guilds keeping things locked up that should be free.”

“You'll like it,” Mark reassures him. He wants to explain so much. He can't wait.

He almost doesn't notice when Eduardo shifts and blinks at him, wide dark eyes round and lovely and finally clear and fully awake. “I... do beg pardon,” Eduardo says. His voice is fever burnt-- hoarse and rough-- but the words are delicate, rational again. He struggles as if he's trying to sit up but doesn't really have the strength. “I seem to be... that is, I am glad to find myself no longer in a dungeon, don't think me ungrateful. But-- _who_ are you?”

Mark can't help the smile that stretches his lips. “You ask me that a lot,” he says. “I'm starting to feel unmemorable.”

Eduardo frowns and shakes his head. “No... no. I don't-- it feels like I know you.”

Mark's smile widens. “Well, good,” he says. And Eduardo smiles back at him, and it's as good as anything he'd been hoping for.

“How did it happen?” Mark asks him a few days later. It's a bright day and there's sunlight warming the wooden slats of the cabin floor. He lounges on the floor with a map spread over his lap, charting their course. The fingers of Eduardo left hand are spread in a pool of light and the right is thumbing through the pages of an old volume of the Aeneid. He means the Inquisitor, the auto-da-fe, everything. He sort of knows the answer, because Eduardo shouted a lot of things during his fevers, but he wants to know more, everything.

Eduardo puts his book down when Mark speaks. There's something tired in his expression. “I did something stupid,” he says. Then he's quiet for a long, painful moment.

Mark talks to break the silence. “What?” he asks. “What did you do? Judaize in the attic?”

There's a shrug. Eduardo winces a little, probably because he catches it on his hurt shoulder. “No,” he says. “We are, I mean my family are New Christians. Conversos. But, I... I wouldn't even know how. That's-- my family didn't-- I think my mother's family kept up the old things a little, sometimes she... but my father hated it so we, she wasn't allowed to-- he said we were Christians and that was the end of it, our family had enough to overcome without...” He stops, frowns. “I shouldn't have told you that.”

“I'm Jewish,” Mark says instead of countering that, really. It's as good as a counter.

Eduardo stares at him then. Wide eyed, searching. His eyes are so big and lovely, even bruised underneath as if he still hasn't slept enough. “Oh,” he says, a little breathy. “ _Oh_. You can just say that.”

Mark shrugs. “There's such a thing as freedom of conscience. In Holland.”

“Lucky Holland,” Eduardo murmurs. He closes his eyes, and Mark doesn't like that. “Don't they think that it's against God? That God will punish them for tolerating that?”

Mark makes a face that no one will see. “Punish them by making them the richest country in Europe, I suppose,” he says.

“Do you have horns?” Eduardo asks, suddenly. “Like a devil?”

Mark blinks. “What?” he sputters.

“They used to say that I—that people like that did. Do you use baby blood for Mass, is that true?” Eduardo's eyes are wide again and his face looks... Mark can't find words. Twisted, eager. Scared. Mark was ready to be angry with him and suddenly he isn't.

“Jews don't have a Mass, Eduardo,” Mark says. “But, no. That's just a libel, an excuse to scare the peasants and make them wild.”

“They-- we don't? Have a Mass?” Just a whisper, soft. Eduardo stares down at his own hands. “I didn't know that. I had no way to know that. I just know what they say. What I read.”

“Your family didn't tell you?” Mark asks carefully. “What it means?”

Eduardo shakes his head sharply. “I wasn't supposed to know, I was supposed to forget it. I have no way to know. What it means to be... just what I read. It's always monsters. People like... we're always the monsters in the story.”

And Mark remembers the crazy old beggar outside the new synagogue, the Esnoga, the one whose legs were so bent he always shuffled when he walked and Mark's mother had said, 'it was the rack. The Spaniards, you know' and shivered, and stepped closer to him, as if to keep a curse away. But the old beggar _spoke_ in Spanish, almost never Dutch. He cursed in Spanish, screamed and cursed and spat about how he despised the filth he was surrounded with, the Jews. 'Isn't he one too?' Mark had asked, staring up at his mother and she only sighed and shook her head yes. 'To him it's only pain and the stories they tell.'

Eduardo isn't crazy, Mark doesn't think, or old. But to him, it might just be pain and stories and nothing else. He doesn't know anything else. Stories. “You should talk to Dustin,” Mark says. “He thinks you're the virtuous maiden in this story.”

Eduardo raises his gaze, blinking. “What?” he says, but the real horror and fear in his face fades a little, at least for now. “That's completely ridiculous. Who's Dustin?”

Mark smiles at him. “He's completely ridiculous. He's my first mate. He's also a Jew.”

There's a small, quiet nod. “Oh,” Eduardo whispers.

“You can ask me questions. So that you'll know what it is, what it really is. You're safe here.”

"Oh," Eduardo says again, but it's steadier, louder. "Thank you. I... I shouldn't have said those things, I know. I'm sorry."

Mark just shakes his head. "You're tired. You should rest."

“I will,” Eduardo says and lays back, closing his eyes. Mark watches him for a while, just sitting where he is, by the bed, but if the sleep is fake, he doesn't show it.

Mark only leaves when someone comes to him with a navigation problem. By the time he gets back, it's hours later and the door to his cabin is slightly ajar, but the sound coming out of it is laughter so he isn't worried.

He peers through the slit of door and just looks for a moment. It's Dustin, of course it is, of course he just wandered in and introduced himself. He's settled in comfortably on the edge of Mark's-- of Eduardo's-- bed, and gesturing wildly, like he's telling one of his favorite stories.

Eduardo's dark eyes shine and he's laughing into his hands, bright and helpless, like whatever Dustin is saying is actually funny. Mark smiles helplessly and steps back, not sure if he wants to go in or just watch, but Eduardo spots him before he has a chance to retreat.

“Mark,” Eduardo calls and holds out one hand, as if beckoning him inside. His smile is brilliant, magnetic, and Mark walks toward him, like a compass to true north. “Should I call you Captain?”

“You should call me Mark,” Mark says, unhesitatingly.

Dustin laughs at them both from his seat. “It's true,” he says. “If you call him Captain he'll forget you're not one of his minions. He'll tell you to have your saber ready to use.” He laughs again, like he thinks he's hilarious.

Eduardo shrugs and shakes his head but he's still smiling. “That won't do him any good, I don't have a saber. They don't let you keep your weapons after they arrest you, it's bad form.”

Dustin waggles his eyebrows in a way he probably thinks is suggestive. “I think you have saber enough to please Mark. In your trousers, at least--”

“No one asked what you think,” Mark says, steady as he can but he can feel the flush, bright-hot, in his cheeks and suddenly, Eduardo isn't smiling anymore, he's looking at him. It's not a nervous look at least, but it's not a good one either.

Speculative, maybe. Tired, Mark thinks. “He's an idiot,” Mark says.

Eduardo laughs, but it's not the same and he looks away. “That saber won't be any good to anyone for a while yet, forgive me my illness,” he murmurs, like it's just a joke. Mark could kill Dustin, he really could, but nothing else comes of it, not then.

It's a few days later, before anything does, another sunny morning. Eduardo's better, he can walk a little, even though the pink skin of his feet is still delicate. He's not walking now, though, he's sprawled out in Mark's bed, in Mark's sheets, watching him. “It wasn't for being a Jew,” he says. “It wasn't because of that... he could do that to me because of that, but it wasn't why.”

“Oh,” Mark says, and looks up from his calculations. He knows this, a little. He heard the fragments of thoughts and fears and screams when Eduardo was delirious. He heard what the Inquisitor had said to Eduardo in that dungeon cell.

Eduardo shifts over, pulling his knees to his chest. He winces a little at the motion and Mark resists the urge to tell him to be careful. He speaks after a moment. “I refused someone I shouldn't have. He told me he'd make me pay for that and he did.” He breathes. “My family is, I thought they could protect-- I didn't believe him at first.”

“They're supposed to be celibate, aren't they? The monks, the Dominicans.” Of course they are. Eduardo doesn't even dignify that with a serious response.

“Supposed to be. I wasn't even supposed to be in Brazil,” he says instead. “My father thought taking in an interest in the family holdings in Sao Paulo would be _good_ for me.”

“Yeah,” Mark says, mostly because Eduardo looks at him like he's expected to say something.

“Yeah,” Eduardo says. “They'll probably cover it up now, in Lisbon. All the chaos, the pirate raid, him being dead. They'll bribe someone and it will be that I got killed by pirates and not... not anything that reflects on the family honor.” He laughs a little, but it's an awful sound. “It's not their fault they didn't help me,” he adds a moment later, as if Mark had been about to say it was. “I didn't understand that at first, but I know it's not. Once you're arrested, the accusations spread like the plague. They'd have arrested everyone, even my mother, my sisters. There was nothing they could do for me.”

Mark thinks, that can't be true. If those people had money, had holdings, that was absolutely wrong. _He_ had done something for Eduardo, after all, hadn't he? What he says is, “All right.”

Eduardo turns his face into the pillow, one of Mark's pillows and Mark likes that anyway. “It's not. All right. I was so... so stupid, I should have just let him--”

“You were brave,” Mark says to the back of Eduardo's neck. When Eduardo's shirt rides up he can see the red lines of whip marks still healing along the otherwise smooth golden line of his back. “You are brave.”

Eduardo laughs into the pillow, or maybe that's a sob. Then he shifts again, turning around. Winces. His eyes are so dark. “I'm not. I'd have done it in the end, he'd have had me in the end, if you hadn't-- I keep thinking about it, because I would have done it just so I could die by the garotte and not the fire, I'd have gone to my death with his spunk dripping down my--”

“Stop it,” Mark interrupts. He doesn't know when or how, but he finds his palm pressed against Eduardo's chest. Eduardo looks exhausted and sad, like the whole world's been after him, like he's never had any peace. All Mark wants is for him to stop, to smile, really smile, to... not this.

Eduardo's mouth does quirk up, but it's not a smile. “Does that disgust you?” he asks. “I wanted to tell you, but I thought it might.”

Mark isn't sure what the right answer is. “No?” he tries, hopefully. Why can't this be easy, like finding good ground for an ambush? Like designing a ship?

“Ah. Does it... arouse you?” Eduardo licks his lips, like maybe they are dry. He's still not smiling. Then he puts his hand over Mark's, pushing it closer. Eduardo's hands are callused, like he's wielded sword and pen all his life. His skin is warm under his shirt. It's one of Mark's shirts, really, everything he's wearing right now is Mark's. Mark can feel his heartbeat, a little fast, but there, present. His own lips are definitely dry.

He swallows. “Um,” Mark says.

“I know that you... I understand your sentiments. You will find I am not... not ungrateful for what you've done for me,” Eduardo says, but he doesn't sound grateful, not really, he sounds tired. He sounds so tired. No peace, the fucking monk left him no peace and pursued him and hurt him until he finally... Mark is paralyzed, paralyzed, but he can feel the drumbeat of Eduardo's heart under his palm.

Eduardo leans forward, those great dark eyes so close, so all consuming, and then he presses his mouth against Mark's. A dry, soft kiss. Mark is hard, he is definitely, relentlessly hard. But he has to... he pulls himself away with wrenching gasp that sends Eduardo sprawling back against the bed.

“No,” he says. “No.” Eduardo stares at him, laying on Mark's bed, hand now pressed over his mouth. Clever fingers, those huge eyes. “I should have sawed off his ears for you even if it did dull my knife,” Mark explains because he's not sure how else to say it, these are the only words he has. “I should have given you his head to nail on your mantel. I wish that I--”

He shakes his head. Eduardo looks like he might speak, but Mark turns around and flees his own quarters so he doesn't hear it.

He runs outside, breathing a little too hard, eyes focused on the straight ahead. He dashes across the deck onto the bow, managing to duck people, or maybe they're ducking him. Dustin catches him there a few bells later, staring out at the expanse of ocean.

“Mark, is something--”

Mark turns on him, red faced and still breathing too hard. “He said he was grateful and he understood my... my _sentiments_ and that he was grateful and he started to put my hand under his shirt and to, to touch me,” he blurts out, even as he knows he's going to regret that, already does really.

Dustin blinks at him, mouth hanging open for a long moment. “Uh,” he says. “Was that not the response you were hoping for when you rescued him?”

Mark can feel his head shake back and forth. “No! I mean, yes, maybe, but-- No! I wanted him to be safe and happy and to smile at me and to-- he just looked tired, Dustin, and in pain and he just-- like he thought he needed to do that so I would go away and leave him in peace. Like no one has left him any peace!”

Dustin blinks again. “You're a terrible pirate,” he says. Which makes about as much sense as anything Dustin ever says.

“What? No, I'm not! I make a better return on shareholder money than any--”

“Shut up, yes you are. I have read broadsheets and pamphlets in every coffee shop in Amsterdam and I am completely certain that when the fair maiden you rescue offers herself up, ravishing is the next step!” At least he's not smirking. Mark has never regretted talking to anyone more.

Mark shrugs anyway and stares at some point over Dustin's shoulder. “I don't remember this pamphlet. I don't see the point if he's just going to be tired and sad. I had to-- he was just going to when he didn't really want--”

“You're a terrible pirate,” Dustin repeats more slowly, shaking his head. “And yet, you may actually be a decent human being. In this... one way. I don't know what to say! I never expected that!”

“For me to be a decent human being?”

“No, a terrible pirate! Listen, do you want me to talk to--” he stops, like for once he's listening to himself talk. Then starts again. “To ask Chris to reassure Eduardo?”

Mark frowns and bites his lower lip. “Yes,” he agrees. “Ask Chris. To tell him that he's safe here, that he should always... should never... not unless he--”

Dustin smiles broadly. “Right!” He claps Mark on the shoulder. “I always knew taking rooms with you at the University was the right move.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this part, there are negotiations, courting via philosophy books and ridiculous true love.

What Chris says after he speaks with Eduardo, carefully and for what seems like a long time, is, “Be careful, Mark. He's highborn, did you know that?”

Mark shrugs minutely and raises an eyebrow. “He told me his family had... has holdings.” Has but didn't use them, didn't try, left him to rot, to burn. Eduardo doesn't even blame them for it. It makes no kind of sense.

Chris frowns, the way he does whenever Mark ignores things that he knows aren't important but Chris thinks are. “So does a burgher family from Amsterdam, but that's not really the same thing at all. The nobility isn't--”

“Nobility? He's a Jew,” Mark says. He doesn't say, _like me, he's like me, he's mine_.

Chris' head shakes and he looks sad for a long moment. “The Spanish and the Portuguese nobility hate them so much because they _are_ them. Legacy of the Moors or whatever you wanted to call it, but in the dark they're mostly alike. I spent some time there on a trading mission and the New Christian families are heavily intermarried with the old.”

“Hate us,” Mark mutters darkly. “They hate _us_.”

Chris only sighs. “They don't give a damn about you, Zuckerberg. You're just some grubby Dutch upstart son of herring merchants, not someone who could walk into the royal court in Lisbon and pass for a nobleman.”

He stares over past Chris' shoulder, out to the sea. “They will give plenty of damns soon enough. If they don't now, when I burn them out and steal their gold.”

That makes Chris laugh and slap his shoulder, “We all will be making them gives their damns. I'm only warning you, about Eduardo... his family is nothing to sneer at, and they--”

“His family?” Mark wants to laugh himself, but doesn't. He doesn't understand what Chris is telling him, not really. It's Chris' job to explain these things to him when he doesn't understand, though, so he tries to listen. “They didn't help him. They weren't any good to him. I was, I saved him. He's mine now.”

There's a line between Chris' brows, deep enough for Mark to be able to imagine what it might look like when he's older, when it's carved and weathered into skin. He looks tired too. “Mark,” he says, softer, like he's sad. “You told me to tell him he was safe here. How do you reconcile that with what you're saying now?”

Mark nods quickly, tightly. “There's nothing to reconcile. He is safe here.”

“If you say so,” Chris says, still tired sounding. “He's highborn, is what I'm telling you. He's not a-- you can't own him like a war prize, one way or another he won't stand it for long. They're not like us.”

Some part of that's not true. Mark just isn't sure which part is the lie yet, but he has a guess. “Spinoza said all noble things are as difficult as they are rare, but I don't mind things that are difficult,” he mutters, mostly under his breath, and then, louder, “I can if I make him want me to. He'll stand for it then.” He can't explain that he doesn't want to own Eduardo, not exactly, though he doesn't have a better word to describe it either. He wants...

He wants.

Chris only shakes his head. “All right, Mark,” he says. “Just be careful.”

But the next time Mark goes back to Eduardo's cabin... he doesn't know when he started thinking of it as Eduardo's cabin and not his... Eduardo smiles at him, and beckons with one hand like there's nothing wrong at all, like there never was.

“I read the book you left me, the philosophy. I'm shocked it wasn't banned. The author's practically an atheist, isn't he?”

“Spinoza? I don't know, really, we haven't met. The Rabbis hate him.” Mark shrugs “It's interesting, though, his book. I thought you might like it.”

Eduardo's eyebrows up and he leans forward, eager. “The Rabbis? He's a Jew?”

“Yes. He's like you. I mean, us, he grew up in Amsterdam, but you. His family's from Portugal.” And Eduardo smiles at him from where he's sitting on Mark's bed, leaning forward, interested, fascinated.

Chris is wrong, Mark decides. Chris is just plain wrong, because he doesn't need a war prize, he doesn't need more than this, Eduardo here like this, smiling at him. And he doesn't need to be afraid of anyone's family barring the way, as long as Eduardo is willing to be here.

Chris is wrong.

***

They travel up the coast, barely making landfall except for provisions. They're loaded down with valuables and Mark is plotting their course up out of Portuguese and Spanish waters and a straight shot up toward the Caribbean and making port at Curaçao.

Mark drills the men, makes sure the powder is dry and calibrates the artillery, but it's routine work, mostly. Just laying the groundwork, just making sure that if anything does go wrong, they can meet it. He knows that this is where a Captain can slip up and lose their course, and that won't happen to him.

Through it, there is also Eduardo. He doesn't try to touch Mark again and that is a good thing, he thinks, but sometimes, he dreams of the careful press of his mouth, the taste of it...

Eduardo reads his way through Mark's books, calm and quiet, other than the soft sound of his breathing and the rustle of paper under his fingers while Mark sits on the floor of his cabin, navigational charts spread around him.

It's a while before he notices the times when Eduardo stops reading and watches him instead. It's longer, maybe a week, before he looks up from his work, eyebrows raised up and asks, “Is watching me that interesting?”

Eduardo smiles and sets aside a gold embossed volume of Locke's essay on toleration, putting it on top of a Latin translation of Maimonides' _Teshuvot_. “It is a little,” he admits easily. “You're the only one in here to watch and I've never seen a navigator at work before. Actually, I spent most of the voyage from Lisbon in my own cabin with the bloody grippe, I felt like a corpse when we made landfall.”

Mark makes a face. “It's fine as long as we're hugging the coast, I can fix our location,” he admits and shifts back, cracking his shoulder. “It's when we pull away that the course can't be corrected properly, especially if the weather turns. I'm trying to make sure we have the right fix, but I won't know if I'm wrong or the currents or the winds have thrown off my reckoning until we're somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic when we should have been off the coast of France. Of course it always is a problem, we're not special.” That's the part he hates, this problem that plagues _everyone_ and he can't see his way around.

Eduardo tilts his head. “Why would--” He pauses, like he's thinking instead of just asking the obvious question, and Mark shifts again. This time, he's the one watching. Watching the thoughts and ideas shift in Eduardo's head, beautiful as smoothly oiled artillery pieces. “I've read about this. It's because you risk losing the ship's position. You have guiding stars if it's clear, but even then you can't quite pinpoint the--”

“The longitude, it's the damned longitude. Out to sea, we can't ever get a fix on it. It confounded the Phoenicians, buggered the Greeks, the Romans never even bothered and the Arabs never solved the problem. So far, neither have we. I can only reckon from a known starting point. It's--” Mark shakes his head. His hands are shaking on the map and he has to take them away or risk tearing it. It's an old frustration, older than he is, older than humanity is, probably, and no one however brilliant, has ever solved it, but it still... it just...

Eduardo frowns at him and shifts up. He's still unsteady on his feet and Mark wants to stop him from moving, but it's only a few steps and then he's leveraging himself down on the floorboards next to Mark. He stares at the maps, at Mark's hands. A moment's pause and then his are covering Mark's. Mark goes still, tilts up, watching, waiting, but Eduardo is still looking at the maps, the coastline of South America.

“The greatest minds of the ancient world never solved this problem. But you think you should be better than them,” Eduardo murmurs, and Mark thinks there should be judgment in those words, condemnation. He'd heard it from the lecturers at Leiden. _Do you really think you're more clever than Hipparchus, you son of a merchant Jew?_ There should be, but when Eduardo's chin tilts up his dark eyes are luminous with something else. “So, how will you do it? How will you solve the longitude?”

Mark can feel his mouth stretch into a smile, and he doesn't know if Eduardo understands him when he starts to talk then, about instruments and magnets and true North, about stars, about Dustin's equations and his own, the ideas they used to spin out drunk and sprawled across the couches in the pubs and whorehouses of Leiden but he knows that Eduardo is listening, and that's all he wants. They stay there for a long time, sprawled on the floor, Mark's ship swaying gently under their bellies.

Mark sleeps in his bed and not on the deck that night for the first time since he'd carried Eduardo on board, fully dressed and peaceful, stretched out on top of the blankets with Eduardo beside him breathing evenly. They don't touch, save for the glancing brush of hands and legs, but it is shockingly bright, those causal touches, heavy with a promise he doesn't understand yet, but knows he will.

He dreams of stars, brilliant in the dark night sky.

They make port in Willemstad on Curaçao after noon bell the next day. Eduardo doesn't come ashore, his feet mean he'd have to be carried if he truly needed to go far, but he does come out on the deck to watch.

“Will you post a letter from me?” Eduardo asks, once Mark is done speaking with the customs man. “If there's a ship bound for Portugal?”

Mark stares down at the letter in Eduardo's hand. He doesn't remember seeing him write it, but then all he'd had was time. “This is a Dutch port,” he says, but he takes the letter anyway. Eduardo's script is careful, steady, the ink barely blotted at all. “Is it to your family?” he asks suddenly, and remembers Chris and Chris' warning. His hand tightens and it's all he can do not to crumble the letter in front of Eduardo's eyes.

Eduardo's mouth shifts and he shakes his head but it's not a denial. “It's in an old family cipher. It should be safe if it falls into the wrong hands.”

“What did you tell them?” Mark asks, carefully and without inflection.

“To forget me. I'll make my own way,” Eduardo says.

Mark nods, thoughtfully and just once. “I'll take your letter, but it may never make it to them.”

Eduardo's expression hardly changes. He looks tired again, as tired as he always was in the first weeks after his fever broke. “I'll have tried. I trust you to try.” He puts one hand over Mark's. His grip is warm and steady and Mark holds it. The touch is still brilliant, like lightening on the water, even like this.

Mark gives the letter to an old acquaintance, a tall English type with a pox scarred eye, who participates in the _asiento_. When he tells Eduardo that later, he gets a careful nod in response. “Thank you. You don't, though? Participate in the African trade?”

Mark frowns and shakes his head. “No. There's steady money in it, I know, but... no. We don't do all of this to be steady.”

Eduardo nods. “Good, I'm glad.” He stops and then makes a face. “I just mean... I've seen those ships and they...”

“I know what you mean. We don't do that kind of voyage.” Mark shrugs and looks away, and they're silent for a moment. He opens a satchel he brought from shore instead, and pulls out a few volumes, holding them out. “Here. This is for you, from the town.”

Eduardo looks down at the covers, thumbs over the surface of one without taking it from Mark and smiles. “I thank you for this also,” he murmurs, and there is a new and particular sweetness to his smile that Mark can't remember ever seeing before. “You should... we should read them together, philosophy is better shared, I think.”

Mark blinks and then stops abruptly when Eduardo takes the books out of his hands, carefully and one by one. There is no need for their hands to touch but they do in any case, a warm brush of fingers, Eduardo's over his. Eduardo looks at him over his shoulder when he goes back to the cabin and he's still smiling.

Mark is left standing, still and straight, staring at the long lines of his back as he walks. He wants to follow at this very moment, he thinks. He wants to... he just wants... but Eduardo, he reminds himself, is no war prize. He needs to steady himself, he thinks, and remember that, so that the smile lingers and the tiredness behind Eduardo's eyes is what vanishes.

“Go after him! Faint heart never won fair maiden!” Dustin calls from across the bow and Mark can't even remember when he came on board. He turns to glare. It's too far to throw a knife at him and a pistol shot would go wide.

“I'm still your Captain,” he shouts. Dustin laughs at him like it's still their student days.

He does go to Eduardo, but later, after the ship is safely guided out of harbor and out to sea. Eduardo still smiles at him, slow and sweet, and Mark is very careful not to touch, not to dream of touching.

He spends the night in the cabin again, despite that, because Eduardo asks him not to go. The slow sound of Eduardo's breathing soothes him, mingled with the sound of waves splashing against the ship, one after another.

***

They cross the water slowly, the winds not terrible but not what Mark would wish for to speed them either. He takes the time to add more drills, more inspections, more, more, more until the men grumble and even Dustin threatens to throw spare ballast at his head. “This, my friend, is what we call sexual frustration. Now that you've discovered you have a cock, you really ought to think about using it instead of tormenting us all with your excess spirits.”

Mark glares, “This isn't like in Leiden when you dragged me whoring-- and remember how well that didn't work? Anyway, we've talked about this. You agreed I was right not to... press myself on him.”

Dustin just laughs at him and slaps his back, easily and without malice and in a way that is as comfortingly familiar as it is irritating. “Yes, when he was tired and sad and you thought he came to you unwillingly. You think he's unwilling now? I'd swear otherwise.”

“Dustin,” Mark hisses.

“Here, how's this? If you don't believe it, I'll be your intermediary and ask him for you.”

“Don't dare,” Mark says, but Dustin walks away, still laughing.

“I've served in that capacity for your sisters, I'll do it for you too, and your fair maiden!” he calls over his shoulder. Mark doesn't throw anything after him because he isn't holding anything he'd like to lose.

At least he doesn't go straight to Eduardo's cabin, so that's something. Even if Mark sees them talking the next day, sitting together in the rigging, feet dangling over the edge as if that was safe, as if Eduardo were well enough to climb it easily.

Mark stomps over to tell them that, but Eduardo's dark eyes just narrow a hair, and he says, “I'm well enough to climb four feet, I think. I'm no child.”

“Don't worry, I'll keep him in leading strings for you, Mark,” Dustin smirks, and really, what is the point of it all?

Mark throws up his hands and walks away, trying not to worry about the way their heads bent together and Dustin pointed and laughed and Eduardo flushed at whatever he was saying.

When Mark seeks him out in the cabin that night, Eduardo is smiling, just slightly, but there's something odd in the tilt of it. “Come here,” he says and Mark comes because he can't help himself. “Sit,” Eduardo says, and he does, just on the edge of the bed, almost falling off it. Eduardo's smile is sharp up close, glinting like the shining folds of Toledo steel, like something that will hold an edge forever if you let it.

“What is it?” Marks asks and he could guess but he knows better than to try.

Eduardo shrugs, his shoulders rolling with the motion. There's something about the way he moves, trained and graceful. Mark can't see what he's doing with his hands. “You think I'm helpless, don't you? Today, in the rigging. And the way you won't... come to me. You think you need to protect me.”

Mark blinks. “You're hurt,” he says, which isn't the same exactly, but it's true. “I-- I think that you, you're not a battle prize, to be taken, I--” he starts and then he shifts and goes rock still.

“You're right,” Eduardo says, and there is a subtlety of exhaustion, rage and hurt and other things in the cool reflection of his smile. “I'm not. I'd have killed you and myself if you treated me like one.”

There's a point of metal grazing against the soft flesh of Mark's throat. So sharp there's no pain but he can feel the thin trickle of blood on his throat.

Of course there is, Eduardo's hands are sword callused and clever, he'd known that right from the start, from the first time he'd touched his hand. Now Eduardo's eyes are dark and narrow. The curl of his mouth is lush and soft in contrast. Mark wants to touch him there, but he remembers that he can't, shouldn't. Not unless...

He swallows, feeling the sharpness of steel on his throat when he does. This... whatever is in Eduardo's eyes is neither fear nor gratitude. It's...

“I may have been stupid before, I may be hurt,” Eduardo murmurs. “But, now I have your sword and what I'm not is helpless. What are you going to do about it?”

Mark draws back, just a little, just slowly, away from the threatening point of the blade-- his blade, the one he'd been wearing at his side seconds ago. He swallows again, hard, fingers rising up to feel the thin streak of slippery red. He can feel his mouth stretch before he even knows he's going to smile, but it feels like... Eduardo's eyes are wild and perfect and exactly what they should be.

“Just this,” Mark says, his voice dropped to a mumble and he lets his chin drop, just a little, so his mouth is in the right place. He isn't thinking, he's just doing, when he presses his mouth to his own sword, his own sword in his... in Eduardo's elegant, careful hands, and then he can taste the blood on it and that's his too, metallic and familiar on his tongue. He looks up at Eduardo from under his lashes and he's smiling, he knows he is.

He can hear Eduardo's breathe, harsh and low, in counterpoint to his own, too fast, too fast. He can feel it, out of place, like badly calibrated artillery, but he doesn't think he's aiming wide, not when Eduardo lowers the blade and sheathes it back at Mark's side, slow and careful and controlled, all the respect of a swordsman in those hands of his.

“Come here,” Eduardo says, and Mark does. Shifts up closer, feels the way the bed creaks, just a little, under the shift of his weight, of Eduardo's. Eduardo's smile, but smiles don't have a weight, not on a bed. Eduardo's smile has geometry instead, like Mark could plot it on a map and pin down what it means.

It means that Eduardo puts his hands on Mark's face and kisses him. There have been other kisses Mark's had, with other people, of course, in Dustin's mad, aborted attempts to take him whoring, and once or twice again besides, but this one... this time, when he finally understands what people meant before when they asked if he was a eunuch not to feel, because before now... this is what he's waited for. This is what he dreamed about, side by side with Eduardo in his bed.

“I didn't know I was waiting,” he says out loud and Eduardo just smiles at him and kisses him again.

“You'll have to wait a little longer,” Eduardo admits softly, in a breath between kisses. “I'm sorry for that.” Mark has one hand wrapped around the curl of his nape, threading into soft hair. Eduardo's hands are warm and tight on his skin, like brands.

“Will I?” Mark stills and slips back a little, but Eduardo's eyes are the same, sharp and hungry, the tiredness is only around the edges.

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is still weak,” Eduardo says and shakes his head. “But... I would like to...”

“Oh,” Mark says and nods quickly, sliding close again. There's still blood on his throat, dry now, uncomfortable and it stings a little, but not much. “This, this is good. Sufficient.”

The wide and lovely curve of Eduardo's smile is everything he wants anyway. Better, when it turns wicked. When the flat curl of his free hand presses lower, between Mark's legs. “If you say so, but let's discuss your flesh instead. Tell me, do you lay hands on yourself, in the dark?” he asks. “The Priests say that's forbidden, spilling seed on a cold bed, outside of a warm body. Do the Rabbis also?”

Mark shivers and it's all he can do to stop his hips from pressing up. “I don't know,” he whispers. “I have never asked.”

“Better not to. Easier to seek forgiveness than permission,” Eduardo whispers agreeably, as if it were a mere philosophical point, as if his hand weren't flat against Mark's trousers and curling down. “So, do you?”

“I... yes...” Mark's hand twitches. “I do that.” He let's it fall, to cover Eduardo's. Their fingers tangle and he moans.

“Show me,” Eduardo murmurs, low and easy, his cultured accent as steady in its suggestiveness as the most expensive courtesan. “I want to see you do it.” Mark swallows and nods.

It's a long night and a sweet one.

 

***

Mark's drills pay off when they slide out of a fog and find themselves up nearly alongside a Spanish ship of the line. Mark's in the crows-nest himself, taking the watch soothes him, so he sees it first and sounds the alarm and slides back down the rigging.

He can tell by their shouts that the Spanish are as surprised as he is or more so, so good, good, all to the good. “Come on, people, we've drilled for this,” he calls, but he hardly needs to, everything's in position, the canon at the ready and the powder dry.

The only thing he hasn't planned for is Eduardo, straight backed and warm, not in the cabin where it's safer. “I can fire a gun,” he says, calm and steady, like that's supposed to matter to Mark. “What can I do to help?”

Mark stares at him. “We didn't drill with you,” he says. There isn't time for this. He knows know that he should have thought about this before, but there isn't time to think about this now.

“What do you need me to do?” Eduardo repeats, like he doesn't understand what Mark means to tell him.

Mark shakes his head. “I need you to be safe. That's all.” He stops. He needs to think. He needs to _think_ about this, but he can't because people are milling and he can smell the charcoal and gun powder. “When you're well, we'll drill with you, but not now. There's no time now and what I need from you is for you not to get hurt.”

He expects... anger maybe? Fears it, but no, Eduardo's face is pale and still and he nods, like maybe he does understand after all. “Alright,” he says, loud enough to be heard over the shouting, but not too loud.

He turns to go, and then suddenly Mark remembers that he's unarmed, isn't he? Normally, Mark doesn't think about the possibility of defeat, not now, not when the battle's about to join, but, Eduardo's unarmed and if the Spanish come... “Wait,” he hears himself say, and without another moment of thinking about it, he's unbuckling the sword from his waist and pressing it into Eduardo's open hands. “If you need it. Kill them. If I'm dead, don't get taken alive, but if I'm alive and you're taken... I'll come and get you, wherever you are.”

Eduardo's eyes are wide and he shakes his head as if he might refuse. “You're the one who needs a good sword.”

“I'll get another one. This one is for you,” Mark says. It's the best one, the sword that Mark knows for certain is true. The sword Eduardo took from him in his bed and held against his throat until it tasted his blood. It belongs in Eduardo's hands, he's sure of that, the very steel of it must know him now. “I'll come find you,” he adds. “After. Now, go.”

Eduardo moves, like he might move forward toward Mark, but just for a moment. Then he turns to go, still too slow on his feet, but steady, determined. The sword held steadily at his side.

There's a battle after, but Mark hardly remembers it, lost in the thrill of tactics and response, all his plans and thoughts and ideas in swift, brilliant motion. This is what he is, this is how he loses himself. Always. It's only this time that a part of himself is not lost at all, but bound in the person of a tall, slim man, holding Mark's sword in his hands.

 

***

After, they take what they can from the Spanish ship and scuttle her. Mark doesn't have enough men for a prize crew, and anyway, he's never liked the lines of the Spanish war ships. Too slow and too clumsy, too damn cheaply built. He's just proven that himself.

He acts by rote, mostly, cleaning up, moving their prisoners to the row boats and setting them off and adrift. He's still filthy and shaking with the aftermath of battle jitters when he comes to his cabin, bursting in through the door because he's too shaky to move slowly.

Eduardo is there. For a moment, Mark can only look at him. He is still pale, still too slim, still not truly recovered from his ordeal at the Inquisitor’s hands, but he is present and alive, sitting crosslegged on Mark's bed, dark head bent over a book. Mark's sword lays across his knees, ready and close at hand and when the door shoves open he grasps it in less than a moment, holding it steady, ready to fight.

He is lovely. It's all Mark can do to stare at him and breathe.

“Are you well?” Eduardo asks, already lowering the blade and setting it aside. He sounds concerned, ready to act.

Vaguely, Mark is aware of the sight he must make, pitch burned from gunpowder, sticky with blood splatters even if none are his. Torn clothes, breathing too hard and clutching a heavy sack to his chest.

He only nods his head, in answer, unable to speak for a moment, and takes a stumbling step forward, still clutching at the sack. His blood is thrumming in his veins, the sharp aftertaste of battlelust shuddering from toe to crown. Seeing Eduardo's bemused face turned up toward him brings it into focus somehow.

He stops walking when his knees hit the edges of the bed. Eduardo reaches up as if to touch him, dark eyes gentle, but the movement is aborted when Mark opens the sack and upends it. There's a scatter of brightness and glitter. Polished gems and pieces of eight, soft and heavy, ringing against each other as the spill out over Eduardo's open hands and pour into his lap. They scatter over his knees, some catching in his trousers and the crooks of his elbows, some clattering past onto the blankets, onto the floor, ringing out.

It's a fortune, enough to buy and sell a ship or a tall house overlooking the banks of the Amstel River. Enough to buy freedom.

“This is for you,” Mark says. He doesn't look at the gold and gems, but at Eduardo's wide, dark eyes and parted lips, his open palms full of coins and the skin beneath them golden. The glitter of possibility is what Mark sees, and that is better than gold. “For what they stole because of your family, from you. So you can make your own way, like you said in your letter.”

“I never cared about the money,” Eduardo says. His gaze slides past it. He looks at Mark. Gold coins slip through his wide open fingers when he reaches up and rests them on Mark's face. His skin is warm and soft and his touch is careful. “That's not what I was hoping for, when I said I'd make my way.”

“I'll take their lives also,” Mark offers. “I'll bring you the heads of any Inquisitors I can find to decorate your front gate.” He lets the empty sack drop, lets himself be drawn down, drawn in, so that he's kneeling on his bed in front of Eduardo. Up close he smells like salt water and ink.

Eduardo smiles at him. “I don't have a front gate,” he says. His thumbs rub the soot off Mark's cheeks, a slow, circular motion. “I don't have a house.”

“You can buy one with this money. Or, if you like, you can have mine,” Mark offers, easily, recklessly. Eduardo's palms are so steady, so solid. “It's mostly empty, I'm never there. You can fill the rooms up with books, whatever you like.”

Eduardo cocks his head to one side, as if he is considering this option, but he doesn't release his grip on Mark's skin. “What if I'd like you to be there?” he asks. “If I'm to be there.”

He doesn't look worn down or sad when he says that. He looks strange and fierce and new and nothing like he wants to let go. “That would be acceptable,” Mark says and nods firmly against Eduardo's hands. “It's a bargain.”

“Agreed, it's a bargain. We should seal it.” Eduardo's lips are on his before he can answer. Slow and careful and clever as the rest of him. Undemanding and warm. Their foreheads press together, the brush of skin making Mark's heart pound, adrenaline still thick in his blood. He's alive, he's victorious and he has... he has this.

Mark lets own lips part and he can feel the curve of Eduardo's smile just moments before he finds himself pushed sprawling down onto the bed. He goes easily and finds that he is smiling too.

“Is the flesh still weak?” Mark hears himself mumbling and he flushes a little at that.

Eduardo flushes too, but he laughs at the same time. “I think... it is possible the flesh can manage,” he offers, and he takes one of Mark's hands in his and presses it down, between his legs, enough that Mark can feel how hard he is. “I thought of you,” Eduardo says. “And then you came to me.”

Mark nods. “I'm here,” he says, and kisses Eduardo on the mouth, steady and sure, knowing the response he'll earn.

AND THEN THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER. MORE OR LESS. ♥

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical note: In the context of this story the Dutch Republic comes across as 'the good guys' (sort of), which for the people concerned, the victims of the Inquisition, they would be. In a broader historical context, that would not necessarily be true at all, especially if you were a West African. An _asiento_ is really just a contract, but in the context of this time period, it is a very specific type of contract that the Spanish and Portuguese governments made with outside merchants, almost exclusively Dutch and English, to supply their colonies with African slaves. Certainly, not all Dutch captains participated in it, but many of them made their fortunes that way or at least dabbled and they became the primary engines of the slave trade. The organized abolitionist movement was still a few generations away so there was no significant countervailing force inside Western European society. This isn't a story about the trade, but I think it's important not to deny that it happened in this time and place (just as the Inquisition did), even in the context of a story that really doesn't strive for serious historicity.


End file.
